Hamiltonian lattice studies of chiral meson field theories

The latticization of the non-linear sigma model reduces a chiral meson field theory to an O(4) spin lattice system with quantum fluctuations. The result is an interesting marriage between quantum many-body theory and classical spin systems. By solving the resulting lattice Hamiltonian by Monte Carlo methods, the dynamics and thermodynamics of pions can be determined non-perturbatively. In a variational 16 3 lattice study, the ground state chiral phase transition is shown to be first order. Moreover, as the chiral phase transition is approached, the mass gap of pionic collective modes with quantum number of the "" vector meson drops toward zero.

Hamiltonian lattice studies of chiral meson field theories Conference Paper